Elsewhere

A few days ago I had remarked that I don’t find the iPhone 4S under iOS 7 slower than before. Now I am wondering whether that comment was in haste.

The past 5 days, while I am on vacation in India, I have been using the iPhone 4S exclusively. And it does feel slow. Not extreme slow like my Galaxy Nexus, but definitely slower compared to the 5S and also possibly compared to how the 4S was before.

I have to qualify my statement with a “possibly” because I am not really sure. I feel the 4S is slower under iOS 7 than iOS 6.x but I am aware that could partly be perception too. After using the iPhone 5S for a month I am used to its faster speeds and so the bar is set higher in my mind. Now I expect apps to open with the speed of iPhone 5S and animations to be as smooth as the 5S, but the 4S being a slower phone can definitely not live up to that expectations.

A few days ago for instance I took out my old iPod Touch 2nd generation and installed whited00r, a custom firmware for such old iDevices that include enhancements from newer Apple firmware. I expected this firmware to be fast on the iPod Touch, but it was not. I disabled all the extra animations and tools, and while I can see the device is not sluggish it just does not match up to my expectations. Which is where the idea first cropped in my head that maybe the problem is in my head. I know the iPod Touch was a great device up to the time I used it last, so if it feels slow now with the same version of firmware it was on (whited00r is based on the 3.x series) it can’t be an issue of using a more demanding firmware on an older device – it has to be my expectation. This is why I qualify my statement about the iPhone 4S and iOS 7 with a “possibly” above.

Apart from that, the iPhone 4S is actually probably slower on the iOS 7 than iOS 6 due to the extra features and gloss and animation. Even the iPhone 5S has a bit of slowness opening folders and some apps, so one can expect it to be worse on iPhone 4S. I feel this slowness is slower than bearable, and I don’t like it much, but I also feel if it’s fixed on the iPhone 5S (I hear iOS 7.1 fixes all these) then it will probably improve on the iPhone 4S. These are quirks with iOS 7 itself – manifesting in both devices – and fixing these quirks will make the iPhone 4S behave as it should. Slow, yes, partly due to perception and partly due to slower hardware, but not as noticeably slow as I have been finding it the past few days.

Hope iOS 7.1 indeed makes the 4S faster. I hate being unable to use the 4S as happily as I used to before.

I believe Apple does not sell you a phone. It sells you an experience, which is why Apple tightly controls the hardware, software, selling channels etc, and so a sub par performance on the 4S is something Apple can’t ignore as other manufactures might, because experience is central to Apple. Even on an older hardware users expect bearable performance from newer firmware as long as Apple officially supports it. Some performance loss would be there due to perception, but apart from that it should work smooth. If Apple feels certain features might not work well on the older devices they are welcome to disable it on such hardware, but everything else should work as expected.